


the bare bones

by firstaudrina



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Buffy Wishverse, Canon Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Multi, the buffy/oz is LITE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:40:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22353502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: If you don't stand up against the darkness, you fall into the void. Set in the alternate universe presented inThe Wish.
Relationships: Daniel "Oz" Osbourne/Buffy Summers
Kudos: 6





	the bare bones

**Author's Note:**

> I actually had the idea for this AU when I was like fiftween but it took quite a while to come to fruition! This is quite literally the bare bones of this AU idea I've had kicking around for ages. Also, I made reference to the 1992 movie and the character Pike played by Luke Perry in said movie.

Spike swings into town with Drusilla in tow and finds a lovely little redhead in a pink fuzzy sweater. It's almost like she's waiting for him, out there after dark where she shouldn't be. She cries but she puts up a good fight and there's a steely determination in her eyes he hadn't expected to find. Spike likes her for that.

They come to Sunnydale for Angel, though Spike could have told Dru he was a lost cause long ago. The Master's a right wanker Spike has no interest in, and Darla's always been annoying; Spike stays for Willow, the only one he's ever turned. Fond of the little thing, he is.

Later he'll say he could smell the power on her, but really Spike just thought she was a bit of alright.

*

When Willow shows up at Xander's door torn and bloody, he thinks _they got her, they got her_ but there's the overwhelming relief that she's still alive, that they left enough to scrap together and save. So he ushers her inside like he's done a million times before and brings her upstairs, sits her on his bed. His fingers shake getting the first aid ready.

He should know better, he really should, than to invite someone in who was so obviously vamp nummies, but it's Willow and so Xander loses all sense.

She starts sobbing and her neck is all bloody, blood seeping into her silly pink sweater with the cotton-candy clown on it. Her tights are ripped and Xander is terrified they did more than bite her, that they broke her in a way he can't fix with gauze pads and antiseptic.

When her teeth sink into his throat, Xander realizes they did.

*

Oz is a good guy, a white hat, and he's proud of it. If you don't stand up against the darkness, you fall into the void.

The Master's got a thing for werewolves, he likes to harness them and train them like pets, or eat them – depends on his mood. It doesn't help Oz's already not-at-all positive feelings, but it does wonders for his resolve.

"Monsters fighting monsters?" the Slayer sneers, her scarred eyebrow raised.

"Something like that," Oz says. He thinks she likes that he doesn't back down. "You think you can do it?"

A cruel smile twists her mouth. "I'm what the nightmares have nightmares about."

Later, a moment before her mouth covers Oz's in what he thinks is meant to be a kiss, she says, "I hunt your kind for their pelts," and Oz says nothing, because Oz has nothing to say.

Monsters fighting monsters, he thinks. That's what they are.

At some point it will dawn on him that the Slayer is a year his junior and he will feel faintly, distantly startled by the thought.

*

Buffy marked off her kills with notches on her stake until the damn thing was so marked up it snapped in half as she was dusting a fledge. Too bad, she thought without feeling. So she started counting them off with scars.

Buffy's spent so long hunting dead things that she's turning into one, stonefaced and stonehearted. Sometimes she thinks of that girl she used to be, stupid and Technicolor, worrying so hard about dances and brand new yellow leather jackets. Yellow stands out in the shadows. Shit like that's no good to Buffy now.

When she thinks too long about that girl, though, her mind inevitably turns to Pike and his blood pouring out hot over her hands, and then Buffy stops thinking, _stops_.

That dumb girl with her lollipops and puffy jackets, her quips and vamp cramps. That girl died with Pike. Now Buffy can't be killed.

That's all ego. Buffy knows better than anyone how easily a dead thing can die.

*

Cordy finds Jesus.

She buys a million sterling silver crosses and wears a series of black dresses demure as a nun. Cordy is always home before sundown and she crosses herself the whole way, prays with self-centered thanks when her door is bolted behind her.

She watches the do-gooders with reluctant fascination: Oz and disappointingly gay Larry and that girl with the unfortunate hair and British Guy. She wonders what motivates them, pushes them forward. Sometimes in the hallways Oz will nod at her and Cordy will think of Devon, who she saw Oz stake with her own eyes.

Sometimes when she sees the van trundling by, keeping watch or giving rides (protecting them all), Cordy wants to catch up. She wants to join in, give a helping hand. _It's, like, the Christian thing to do_ , Harmony says once, but none of them do it. Cordelia just makes herself invisible and prays and prays.

She's going to live through high school if it kills her.

*

Willow knows lots of things: history, literature, science, and math, Willow got solid straight A's.

Willow knows lots of things: how flesh burns, dead flesh and living flesh and in-between; how long it takes to drain a high school junior; what to feed a captive to flavor the blood just right.

"My sweet pet," her sire laughs, "Clever little Red."

Willow preens under the attention and grows strong like she never was before, when she was that weak pathetic other Willow. Willow rips a bloody swath through everyone who ever ignored her. Willow drinks her mother's blood like cool water from a fresh spring, cupped in both hands and sipped. Willow bathes her face in blood.

"The only good thing to come out of that ne'er-do-well," the Master says, meaning Spike. He adds, "I should have given you the gift myself, from my veins," and as a reward for her cruelty, he gives her Angel.

"I always wanted a puppy," Willow says and she makes tormenting fiery lines down Angel's chest. That other Willow hadn't been allowed to have any pets, she was allergic, weak in every possible way. But this Willow gets to play.

*

Angel could tell his captors not to bother, that there is emptiness in him so deep it cannot be touched by pain or shame, but he believes he deserves punishment and so he endures.

"Oh, the great ponce," Spike sighs, delight behind his cold blue eyes. Spike has no sense of art or poetry, so he is only lighting cigarettes and kicking Angel hard now and then in the ribs or stomach, monologue-ing at length. "Never thought I'd see you curled up like a wounded kitten."

There is a rotating wheel of this. Angel could tell the time by who comes to torture him and sigh over what he once was. It used to be Darla. Used to be. Spike has happily filled her void, though Angel doesn't like to look at Spike half as much.

Spike takes out lifetimes' worth of bitter revenge on Angel's skin.

Willow is child's play. Xander only watches.

The Master never comes; it's enough for him to have Angel in chains.

Drusilla is the worst. Angel thinks she's trying to drive him mad.

He escapes inside himself, dreaming of a world where the little blonde Slayer came and Angel was finally given the chance to atone. 

*

Darla's the one who chains Angel up when the Master rises and she's never been happier to do it. The soul's made him all kinds of soft and he's malleable in a way he never was before, the fight gone out of him.

"I thought she'd come," he moans as Spike's pet puts out matches on his torso.

"That's enough," Darla snaps, sending the redhead scuttling away. Darla hates newborns. "Baby." Darla's voice goes all cooing. "Don't you remember what you used to tell all the girls?" She settles onto him, nails tiptoeing up his burnt chest. "No one's coming to save you."

The problem is, Darla tries. She tries to fuck the soul out of him and burn it out and cut it out and finally realizes that it can't be done, that the soul has taken root. Her boy's long dead.

It's out of love for her boy that she tries to take Angel away, let him go. But he's slow and Darla's clumsy with centuries of bloody affection, so they're caught and she's punished, the Master's disappointment a palpable thing.

"I had such hopes for you, dear one," he murmurs and then, with little ceremony, swings a stake at her chest. It's supposed to be a mercy she isn't to suffer sunlight's slow burn.

"This isn't the end of me!" Darla shrieks before her four hundred and fifty years worth of dust rains down on Angel's surprised, half-conscious face.

Everyone laughs; who would bring a vampire back?


End file.
